When comparing Nova Launcher Prime vs Fantastical, the Slant community recommends Nova Launcher Prime for most people. In the question“What are the most useful Android phone apps?”Nova Launcher Prime is ranked 1st while Fantastical is ranked 20th. The most important reason people chose Nova Launcher Prime is:

Nova Launcher provides an experience that's similar to stock Android, but adds multiple customization options. Customization ranges in ways that interactions and the user interface can be changed both aesthetically and functionally.

Pros

Pro

Has a more customizable stock Android experience

Nova Launcher provides an experience that's similar to stock Android, but adds multiple customization options. Customization ranges in ways that interactions and the user interface can be changed both aesthetically and functionally.

Pro

Fast

Speed of Nova Launcher is one of the app's key points. Even with a lot of widgets Nova Launcher performs speedy.

Pro

Drawer style options

Options include horizontal pages, vertical scrolling or list. The user is also able to adjust the background transparency. This way the users drawer can look unique while also offering more or less apps on the page depending on their preference.

Pro

Gesture support

Use gestures (swipe up, double tap, etc.) to easily launch apps.

Pro

Custom grid size

From the Nova Settings menu, users can create a custom grid size for their desktop and app drawer, up to a maximum of 12 columns and rows. Discriminating users can also adjust the size of the margins on the top, bottom, left and right. This allows for users to set how many widgets and apps can fit on these screens.

Pro

Custom icon packs

Not all custom launchers allow custom icon packs. Nova supports most custom icon packs that are in the Play Store.

Pro

Useful visual customization options

All of these options allow for very individualistic differences in how the launcher performs and looks, making for a great way to set ones phone apart from others.

Pro

Stable

Solid performance for getting work (and play) done, no crashes, no slow downs.

Pro

Infinite home screen scroll

Turning on infinite scrolling allows the user to move seamlessly among all of their home screens, rather than having to scroll backward when the last page is reached. This proves particularly useful if the user has a large number of homescreens. Infinite scrolling can also be enabled in the app drawer.

Pro

Extra dock pages

There are extra bottom row dock pages accessible when swiping left or right on the dock. In Nova's settings there is support for a maximum of five dock pages and a minimum of one.

This way you can set up to 25 shortcuts in the dock that can be scrolled though, leaving plenty of room on the home screen for widgets and other apps.

Pro

Unread counts

Nova Launcher Prime offers unread counts for all supported apps, a feature not available on all launchers. Although it requires the free installation of TeslaUnread.

What TeslaUnread does is add unread count numbers to certain application icons in ones application drawer and home screen, giving a quick overview of how many unread notifications they have in that supported application.

Pro

Folders in the app drawer

Nova Launcher has the ability to add folders into the app drawer making for easy sorting of many apps.

Pro

Outstanding widget support

With the custom grids, most widgets can be sized to specifications which give added control over Android home screens.

Pro

Allows hiding the status bar

Within Nova's setting the user can set the notification bar to stay hidden, allowing for more screen real estate.

Pro

Desktop lock

It has an option to lock the icons and widgets in place as well as locks out the ability to delete apps, preventing accidental rearranging or deletions.

Pro

Tapping & swiping a shortcut can have different results

Nova has the ability to add an assortment of action shortcuts to the home-screen which can be performed when swiping on particular areas or icons (as opposed to when tapping).

Pro

Tablet support

The app drawer and widgets take full advantage of a tablets extra screen real estate.

Pro

Can automatically sort inside of folders alphabetically

The user can sort their folders in the drawer and home-screen alphabetically.

Pro

Folder contents synced between drawer and homescreen

Create a folder in the drawer.

Drag the folder from the drawer to a home screen.

Add more items to the drawer folder.

The item gets added automatically to the home screen folder (because it is the same folder).

In addition, the user can set a custom icon for the folder (or for each shortcut).

Pro

Google widget customizations

Pro

Sesame Shortcuts integration

Pro

Supports multiple calendar platforms

If you're locked into using an Exchange account, Google Calendar won't work without 3rd party syncing options. Fantastical works flawlessly with Exchange and with Google Accounts so you can have both. It also supports iCloud, Office365, Yahoo, and Facebook calendars.

Pro

Fantastical can comprehend natural language

You can copy and paste a line from a meeting note and Fantastical can copy down and present the relevant information

Pro

Beautiful and highly polished design

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Cons

Con

Overwhelming at first

Nova Launcher offers such a huge amount of customization that at first it is quite a bit overwhelming. There are settings everywhere and other launchers offer more of a step-by-step setup process. Nova Launcher could take you hours to set up how you like it. On the other hand the pure amount of settings allows you to set it up almost exactly how you like it.

Con

Lacks automatic backup

There is no way to automatically back up settings or content. Reinstalling the launcher on the same device will lose all settings and content.

Con

Less icon packs

This launcher has less icon packs. The system icons it has, are not HD quality.

Con

Memory utilisation is a bit high

With all of the features and options Nova Launcher offers there is an understandable loss of RAM, though it could always be optimized better.

Con

Expensive for a single utility app

Fantastical on OS X costs $49.99 and an additional $4.99 if you want to use it on iOS.

Con

Only supports iOS and OSX

Fantastical doesn't support web, Windows or Android.

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